Avona-Lee’s Mountain

She made it hers,

climbing it daily when the light was right,

struggling up its steepness with easel, oils,

canvas, investing long hours in its moods.

She lives in each stroke of sky, in conifer shades

and shadows, in mitered wood corners

capturing the scent of rain,

winged silhouettes above variable shine

and sheen, unknown rustling out of sight.

She began with a palette of sunset,

moonrise, adobe, Spanish gold, deer blood,

a blend of ocher earths, an eagle feather.

Ancient music threads through the pigments,

obliterating margins, dimensions, even the fourth.

Her palimpsest is bear prints, gray under-trails,

mauve dust, discarded antlers, roots, old ashes.

The ground remembers songs men long ago forgot,

the pulsing undertones of hidden colors,

the arcane rhythms of metamorphic rock.

I, too, long to live on this mountain,

high and wind-washed, long to listen

to whisperings, breathe fragrance of branch

and bark, merge with chiaroscuro shapes

between countless colonnades

of pine and spruce colonizing the slopes.

I have entered the picture, wanting my essence

carved in cortex like initials, moving always

upward, content in the care of a tree, catching

the eye of anyone who passes. I will learn

the patience of verdure and stone, feel

the soft brushes of dawn, the knife of noon,

the stiff bristles of winter.

And in such heights I will learn how to pray.

ÑGlenna Holloway